Vodafone on Friday announced plans to provide coding training to teenage girls across 26 countries, including India.

"In India, 40 teenage girls will gain places on the free coding programme later this year," a Vodafone release said.

The in-person global coding programme will see Vodafone partnering with 'Code First: Girls' (which runs coding courses for women and girls). It will provide five-day, coding workshops for teenage girls across Europe, India, the Middle East, South Africa and Australasia.

The release noted that the United Nations Educations, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), earlier this year, had expressed concerns about reducing female participation in a field that is otherwise expanding globally.

"Men still dominate the number of STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates in most countries," it said.

The coding course has been created to be suitable for girls of ages 14 to 18, irrespective of their skills.

It will provide basic knowledge of computer languages and development programmes, enabling the students to develop a website by the end of the one-week training programme.